In Infinite Remorse of Soul
by perverse-idyll
Summary: Albus Dumbledore never makes the same mistake twice. Certainly not in love.
1. Chapter 1

**In Infinite Remorse of Soul**

"The Universe, cleft to the core,  
>Lay open to my probing sense<br>That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence  
>But could not,—nay! But needs must suck<br>At the great wound, and could not pluck  
>My lips away till I had drawn<br>All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!  
>For my omniscience paid I toll<br>In infinite remorse of soul.  
>All sin was of my sinning, all<br>Atoning mine, and mine the gall  
>Of all regret. Mine was the weight<br>Of every brooded wrong, the hate  
>That stood behind each envious thrust,<br>Mine every greed, mine every lust.  
>And all the while for every grief,<br>Each suffering, I craved relief  
>With individual desire…"<p>

~ from _Renascence_ by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Part One

The day before Harry Potter is due to enter the castle, Albus summons his Potions master to his office and hands him photos of the Chosen One taken earlier that summer.

Severus blanches, lips sticking together like strips of candied pink fruit. He frowns at a photo. The image of Harry straightens his taped-together glasses, blinks, turns away. Slowly Severus wipes a finger across the boy's face. Albus assumes he's trying to eradicate the resemblance to James. Bending closer, he observes how that thin finger traces the lunar phases of Harry's cheek, full face to profile to sad little crescent.

The nail on Severus' finger is blackened. Probably another barely-prevented disaster while brewing. Albus has lost track of the number of times he's healed cuts and burns on the Potions master's hands, the only things of even minimal beauty Severus possesses. Yet he's careless with them, inflicting stains, scars. Deep in thought, he tends to stroke his lips, and Albus can usually tell when he's thinking about the past because he'll pull on the skin of his knuckles with his teeth. The only reason Albus notices them now is because Severus, to his knowledge, never touches anyone. How like him to treat a flat imitation of life with the gentleness he never shows flesh and blood.

As if disputing that, Severus huffs, "The brat looks like his father," and tosses the photo back onto Albus' desk. Ah, he'd been searching for evidence of his lost Lily. Yes. One mustn't forget: this young ruffian had been ready to let the child die in exchange for its mother's life.

Those thin lips glisten, as if he's licked them while Albus wasn't looking. He imagines they would taste like pink grapefruit, sour in a way that makes one salivate. He could find out, but such foolishness would compromise them both.

Leaning down to Severus' ear, he exudes the merest touch of doubt. "You _will_ keep your word, I hope?"

Severus swells up on cue like a puff adder, volatile with suffering. He spins aside and paces as if to the end of a leash, jerking about to stalk back the other way until obedience has yanked him ten times across the carpet. Albus watches until he tires of the scene, murmuring, "Severus," the edge of command as insulting as the previous doubt.

The boy flashes him one of those feral-hawk glares, a fierceness Albus loves so much he's guilty of inciting it for no good reason, a wild look that calculates the consequences of ripping a chunk of flesh from Albus' hand and gliding away to worry at it in secret. The rush of blood this sends to his... well, his memories, is something Albus relishes, and he almost hopes, just this once, Severus will refuse.

Instead, without being ordered to, he kneels.

Ah, well. Another day, perhaps.

Stroking his beard to hide his quickening breath, Albus contemplates the top of Severus' bent head. Through the silence between them sways the rustle of autumn branches, the distant mutter of a dark storm, the wind that muffled the crack of Apparition on a lonely hillside. It's a silence full of echoes from ten years ago: the grovelling, pleading, panting of a prodigal who kneels now exactly as he did then.

"My boy," Albus says almost kindly, because kindness is something that mystifies his young servant. Severus' eyes dart upwards, apprehensive, accusing, and Albus can see the darkness inside the boy clawing to reach him. Guilt calling to guilt.

The moment quivers and thins until he judges that Severus has had enough and is about to rebel. A harsh rasp draws his attention. He looks down at the bruised, blackened fingernail scraping across stone.

"My boy," he sighs. "You never fail to disgust me."

The ritual word strikes Severus down. His obstinate body shrinks, wings of hair flapping forward to shut his scowling face from view.

Shedding benevolence like an invisibility cloak, Albus stands tall, as if his height is a moral distance he's required to maintain.

_Disgust_.

The word radiates power, a power he associates with reckless, contemptuous laughter and golden curls, but most of all with the sight of his sister falling dead. Disgust is the name for what Severus represents, what he provokes. What they have in common.

Who better to instruct a Slytherin in remorse than someone led equally into error? Albus once had his Gellert, his golden boy, a mistake so extreme as to last him a lifetime. He still mourns. Still repents. He expects no less of this greasy, brilliant, envenomed young sinner. It's a relief, actually, to deal with someone whose very nature is reflected in his physical features. As with a snake or a spider, one knows instinctively not to pick it up. Albus is old enough, and Severus ill-favoured enough, there's little danger either one will be seduced.

"I still have faith that this is a temporary state of affairs," he says, because withholding all hope goes against his principles. Not to mention his plans. "Remember, Severus, it's quite likely your old master will attempt to kill the boy. We must prevent this at all costs." Severus pales a little; it's no secret what price Albus has in mind. "You may go now."

He gauges Severus' mood by the way he climbs to his feet. He's a bit crumpled today, shoulders hunched in what Albus thinks of as his witness-box posture, a souvenir of the Death Eater trials. Not that Severus actually faced the Wizengamot; Albus saw to that. No, he only faced Albus. Now he holds his wand at a confused angle, left hand clenched resentfully in his robes as if wanting to throw them down, stomp on them, spit.

"One final word," Albus says as Severus breaks for the door, his suppressed temper practically warping the air. "Don't hesitate to grill Harry on his magical knowledge. You mustn't spare him, even for Lily's sake. His life, and the lives of a great many others, depends upon it."

Severus pivots, eyes singeing Albus' conscience for an instant before tunnelling into darkness. Albus wonders if he's overstepped, then puts it down to the rare phenomenon of Severus being divided between the opportunity to treat James Potter's spawn like dirt and the long-postponed rawness of meeting Lily's child.

"_Accio_ Potter's photo!"

A sheet flies from the desk and flaps into Severus' outstretched hand. He brandishes it aloft, as if shaking a packet of lies in Albus' face. "Don't expect me to care about the brat," he snarls, and swoops out clutching his compromised dignity.

With him goes the photo, the one of Harry turning away, the one that carries a blood-damaged fingerprint's furtive shadow. With him also goes all the electricity in the room, as if suctioned into the swirl of robes.

Albus sighs again. After these sessions he always feels strangely hollow.

He has to wonder sometimes what Severus gets out of it. The answer lies, no doubt, in the sexual desperation that enters the room with him, bundled tightly inside an overabundance of black wool, an ozone simmer of onrushing storm along with the odour of last night's potion, the tinge of blood and ambergris, milkweed sap, loosestrife, the suppleness of preserved snake skin, the lubricious slime of unicorn afterbirth.

Severus has never actually asked Albus' forgiveness. Instead he seeks out this ritual, submits to it, fuming silently at Albus' feet, waves of bitterness rolling off him like confessional incense, absorbed by the dungeon walls and Albus' prick. To Albus' shame, he always hardens when Severus slinks to the floor like a melted candle, flesh smoking with burnt pride. Darkness in chains; who knew it could be such an aphrodisiac? Anyone able to bottle and sell it would soon be rolling in Galleons.

Severus must never suspect that Albus finds anything about him beguiling—well, except for his hands. He sometimes thinks that's why Severus plunges them so freely into flesh-eating substances: to spoil Albus' admiration.

Loneliness is part of their penance; Albus has long since accepted that. Severus must, too.

The Sorting goes as expected. That first evening at dinner everyone's attention swarms to poor Harry. Alert to magical agitation, the freakshow curiosity bubbling under the surface, Albus sets his usual jovial example. He urges a long-distance toast upon his Potions master, who's already ministering to his nerves by tippling over his usual limit. Severus pointedly ignores him. Albus feels an odd carbonated resentment below his heart, as of one too many Fizzing Whizbees. He smiles at Quirrell instead. Candlelight flames around Severus' face as he drains his wineglass, eyes never straying from the Gryffindor table.

What is it he sees when he looks at Harry?

His death warrant, no doubt.

The school year flies by in a series of shocks and triumphs. Harry takes down a troll, faces the Mirror of Erised, upsets Riddle's schemes, and blisters the skin of the Dark Lord's vessel with his bare hands. All in all, an impressive début.

Not so for Severus, who finishes out the year with one leg savaged by a Cerberus and his robes set on fire. By term's end, his loathing of the Boy Who Lived has dragged him down to the level of an obsessed lunatic.

After such chaos, spring tumbles to a close, and Albus stands at an open window, his gown fluttering as he ponders the years to come.

A knock. Excellent. He'd almost given up hope.

The morning lake shimmers from austere pewter to pinafore blue. Harry's on it, sailing away to Privet Drive, and all Albus' plots and schemes sail with him. He worries for the boy's safety. The Dursleys are a deplorable excuse for a loving family, but Harry's survived them so far with his innocence intact. Unlike some students, who arrive at Hogwarts with no memory of such a soft, swaddling garment. Students who assume that innocence is a myth.

Or a lie. One that can't be made true, thus driving them deeper into pessimism.

One of those students is at his door now. "Come in."

Albus waits until he hears the sealing click, the soft tread. It wouldn't do to have Minerva catch them at this.

"Kneel."

A gust of outrage prickles over his back, but he hears no protest, just the shuffle of feet, the susurrus of robes.

Several minutes later, he turns from the fragile barks on the water to where Severus is crouched, a disgruntled knot, about to combust from sheer unvented resentment. He's lost a stone since September and is starting to resemble those sugar paste skeletons-on-sticks some children fancy at All Hallows Eve.

Before he can explode, Albus says, quick and sharp, "I'm in no mood for your selfish diatribes. You disgust me, my boy, you really do. Are you so blind to what lies ahead?"

It's the opposite of what Severus expects; that's why Albus does it. He takes pride in these games, in his strategies, in watching Severus sweat out his hubris like a sickness. Albus the leech-doctor. Ah, well, some spiritual callings are like that. But he can't bleed the boy of all his violence, because his capacity for cruelty just might save Harry's neck someday.

In truth, he underestimated Severus' courage and is already revising his long-range plans to make use of it.

"The brat's his father reborn," Severus rants from the floor, his hands squeezing futilely at his knees. Albus imagines Harry's neck would fit rather nicely if placed where Severus could reach it. "Reckless. Arrogant. He breaks the rules and you give him House points. Bloody King Harry is what he is. You conspire in his idiotic behaviour, then expect me to protect him? How the bleeding _hell_ am I supposed to do that?"

"Are you under the impression that I summoned you here to ask your opinion?" Albus says. "No, Severus. I merely wanted to wish you a pleasant summer. And to tell you to keep watch for my owls."

He awaits the day Severus actually levitates from fury. The unflattering gauntness accentuates his frightful demeanour; Albus is tempted to test out the theory that he could cut a finger by stroking those cheekbones. And that nose. As the rest of him diminishes, Severus' nose increases in distinction, so drastic it could perforate tin.

"Why do you spoil the brat?" he demands, refusing to be warned off the subject.

"After ten years with Petunia Dursley, don't you think Harry warrants a little spoiling?" Albus means it rhetorically, but Severus clearly wants to fight about this, so Albus chooses the shortest way to win the argument. "You remember what it was like growing up lonely and unloved. Surely you don't wish that upon Lily's child?"

"Don't prate to me of _love_," Severus sneers. "I'll do what I can to keep Potter from dying of his own toxic stupidity. In exchange, kindly try to be a bit less transparent about your sodding stage-management."

Albus answers that with his most compassionate smile. Failing spontaneous levitation, he'll settle for seeing the veins on Severus' temples bulge. "Off you go," he says with a negligent wave, tempted as always to tell the boy to stay; the only time he ever looks genuinely fetching is down on his knees. "This is the way it will have to be until Tom Riddle returns and Harry's last chance at childhood expires. Not all of us are as eager as you were to grow up, Severus. Have patience."

The pale hands cease fussing; the black eyes defy him. There are times Albus wishes he could do more than merely salvage this morally deformed misfit while somehow keeping him frozen in his sacrificial posture of unpurged guilt. But ever since he tied Severus' fate to that of the child Lily died to save, he's known which of the two he will choose.

Severus and his expendable soul are already gone, door flung wide, before it occurs to Albus that he ought perhaps to have sweetened his dismissal.

Not to worry. Next time. The war's hardly begun.

~~#~~

As the years pass and the hair's-breadth escapes pile up, Albus finally admits to himself that he's in danger of losing his—devil take it, what did Alastor call him? His "long streak of piss on the wall." Not to the resurrected, serpentine Riddle, oh no. To Harry. It's almost heartwarming the way the poor Dark lad struggles, entangled in his own web.

He's aware—thanks to the grudge-gossip of students, a castle full of tattletale ghosts, a tart remark or twenty Minerva lets slip over glasses of amontillado—that Severus has lapsed back into skulking. As a student he often preferred the shadows, and it seems he's regressed. Whilst the rest of Hogwarts sleeps, he stalks through the wee hours, a waking nightmare, a spiteful, vitriol-spitting, volcanic-eyed ghost of tragedies past.

The fact that he's a natural spy—or snoop, point taken, Mr. Black—allows him to keep watch on Harry like a night-stained Bundimun stuck to a wall. Or a figure in a portrait gallery, slipping unnoticed from frame to frame, peering from alcoves and cobwebbed corners, eyes sly.

Very old-fashioned in some ways, is our Severus.

It relieves Albus' mind at first that his young colleague follows the child so obsessively. It doesn't stop Severus complaining, of course, vindictiveness a-boil. Albus sometimes wonders, were he to cast an Imperturbable so that none were forced to give ear to Severus' screeds but Severus himself, would that be the straw to shatter his self-control?

Best to save it, in that case, for an opportune moment.

He doesn't really pay heed until Harry's third year, when term starts with talk of the Azkaban prison break and a sense of implacable disaster. _SIRIUS BLACK!_ scream the papers, and rumours rustle amongst the students like wind in the cornstalks: _come to kill Harry_. Severus' wrath is like one of those peat-bog fires that burns year round, molten flame visible through cracks in the earth. Predicting flare-ups, Albus eyes him throughout the Welcoming Feast. Usually Severus eyes him back, secretive behind his unsavoury hair. It's a game they play.

Albus had once hoped that Severus' habit of watching him was a sign of unwilling attraction, because the boy is drawn to power and until Tom Riddle becomes corporeal enough to compete, Albus is guaranteed always to be the most powerful wizard in the room.

But that may be changing, because Harry Potter is here now.

The previous year, forced by bloodshed and basilisks to make excuses for Harry's Slytherin hissing, Albus had been struck by a realisation: Harry's virtually Severus' mirror opposite, with all the negatives reversed to positives. The pity of it is, Severus gives even his nobler qualities a bad name. His cinder of heart-blistering love—although perhaps _hunger_ is a more honest word for it—is the only thing his private darkness hasn't snuffed out.

Meanwhile Harry, the soul of good intentions, always, with a little help from his friends—and there, you see? A crucial difference—comes up smelling like Amortentia. Even when people die for him. Whereas Severus' moral odour is comparable to snake bile, his motives to grave-digging, the constant re-burying of his lost love. (A love that turned its back on him, but never mind. Albus knows how that is. Best not to confuse the issue with humiliating truths.)

He wonders if Severus is aware of the irony. Then decides, of course he is. His loathing is all about the past; his yearning is like a constant background whisper of hope, and hope belongs to the future. Or would, if Severus, with breathtaking malice, didn't sabotage his everyday encounters with the boy.

Or if Albus didn't. Because if Severus falters, someone has to be there to take up the slack.

From the escalation of Severus' predatory behaviour and the increased acid content of his insults, it's clear he feels beleaguered by the ghosts of childhoods past converging upon Hogwarts: Lupin in the classroom, Black on the loose, Harry an uncanny approximation of James.

It doesn't need Trelawney to predict that old dramas will erupt like a squad of stinking Inferi, corpses reanimated by undead feuds. Severus repeats his youthful error of sneaking after Gryffindors into the bowels of the earth, cornering the whole lot of them in the Shrieking Shack. Astonishingly, he doesn't kill Sirius while he has the chance. In the scrimmage, Harry sides with his godfather, and with a leg-up from an illegal Time-Turner helps him escape.

Then, at last, it happens: what Albus, stealthily orchestrating matters from behind the scenes, has anticipated for months.

Severus cracks. Spectacularly.

"What do I want?" he shrieks when Albus makes the grave but highly entertaining mistake of asking a reasonable question. "What do you fucking _think_ I want? An Order of Merlin, would that be too much to ask? Some respect for what I'm risking? I want that bastard Black _Kissed_. You know that! He _betrayed_ her, he broke Fidelius, he's the reason she's dead, and you're—" Raw and bruised from Sirius' callous treatment, his sallow face flushes like a furious drunk's. "You're helping him dash about the countryside, you bloody let him _touch_ the boy—"

"No, Severus." It's wicked, but Albus is enjoying the show. "You're wrong about that."

"Am I? About what, Dumbledore? Please tell me where I'm wrong. About being attacked by my own students? Humiliated by Harry fucking Potter, whom I was there to protect? Banged unconscious about the tunnel by a mob of sodding Gryffindors?"

Refusing to be placated, he paces the office, weathering spasms that shake him in electric-shock bursts. Sooner than see him felled by a stroke, Albus decides it would be kinder to bend the boy to his will. Exhausted, uncooperative, Severus vibrates around the room in a frenzy of defiance, fresh bursts of profanity spraying from his lips. Finally he sinks to the floor, not on carpet but bare stone, and curls forward, shuddering.

With some misgiving, Albus leaves him there for an hour while he sits at his desk and pens several subtly worded appeals to various departments of the Ministry, re: amnesty for Sirius Black.

When he checks on his penitent, the ritual words poised on his tongue, Severus' pale face hovers upward like a viper's. "You knew. Potter. Black and Lupin. Their oh so charming reunion in the Shrieking Shack. You _knew_ it would happen. History repeating itself. I could have died tonight, and you would have assured the world it was all my fault. "

The accusing whisper tickles the inside of Albus' thigh. It was ever thus, the boy implying that if Albus cares for others he can't possibly care for _him_.

He leans as close as he dare go, as if intending to knock Severus down and walk over him; this is the nearest they ever get to intimacy. "What I know, Severus, is that you were practically salivating over the idea of sending an innocent man to his death."

Hatred steams through the black robes. The shining lilac Albus wears laps around this cesspool of hurt feelings like a Patronus overpowering a crippled Dementor.

But when Severus cries, "If I live to be a hundred, which I hope to God I do _not_," and lowers his brow to Albus' knee, voice dropping to a whisper, "I shall never understand your definition of innocence," Albus almost loses his resolve.

He wants to forgive. He wants to. But he can't.

Once upon a time, Albus saw Gellert's golden ebullience as a sign that he must be—not virtuous. _Wonderful_. After Tom Riddle, Albus came to understand that he should rely less on compassion and more, perhaps, on judgment. By the time Severus crossed his path, that judgment had acquired a keen, almost decapitating edge.

Penance can be had cheap. Redemption, on the other hand, is a trickier business that shouldn't be left to amateurs.

The Tournament disrupts Hogwarts; the children grow apace. Albus spares a moment to note that Severus' fixation on Harry has acquired an element of dusty indecency, redolent of decomposing velvet. He's always suspected that a latent vein of decadence lurks beneath the Potions master's austerity. Lately whenever he calls a meeting, Severus storms in early and rants at self-indulgent length about "the brat, the boy, Potter this, Potter that, maddening, disrespectful, bloody full of himself," and Albus either tuts or ignores him entirely. Irritable with the relief of saying Harry's name aloud, Severus roams the office, black eyes aglow with an opiate lustre.

This is how Albus prefers to think of him, late at night, in privacy tinted with possessiveness.

He isn't worried that Severus will act on his infatuation; he's fairly certain the boy hasn't figured out, or won't admit, why he's so obsessed. However, the grotesque fumes of his sexual frustration certainly clear a path when he stalks the halls these days.

This asthmatic eroticism doesn't cow Harry in the least. On the contrary, Professor Snape's tendency to breathe harder around him brings out Harry's belligerent side. Albus hears word of their collisions in the classroom. He's a frequent witness to their public showdowns, nose to nose in the corridors, shouting insults.

Thank Merlin Harry's so distracted by the Tournament. And that quarrelling like a hormonal adolescent sates Severus' tendency toward voluptuous rage.

"Have you ordered Moody to spy on me?" he asks once, abruptly.

"Your paranoia's getting the better of you," Albus chides, but he remembers this later, when Barty Crouch, Jr. grins vilely and spits in Severus' face.

Partway through the year the boy enters Albus' rooms without forewarning. For once, he doesn't speak of Harry. In fact he doesn't speak at all. He merely stares, smudged eyes like guttering candles. For some reason the phrase 'whited sepulchre' creeps into Albus' mind. How very long it's been since they last dined together, since they talked of magical theory, of anything except the war.

Careful not to threaten Severus' fragile composure, he closes the folios on arithmantic prediction he uses to plan Harry's future, sets them aside, and waits.

Severus glares at the floor.

Albus nods. "If that's how you prefer it, then. On your knees."

Severus doesn't submit at once. First, with a rigid intensity that can't quite hide his trembling, he strips naked. Jerky flicks of his wand melt the fabric away, robes dripping off him to reveal a body like a freshly peeled twig, white as limestone, isolated by a spreading tide of black. When he does sink down, his kneecaps bump painfully on the underlying stone.

Albus is stricken. Yes, stricken. With _want_.

He ought to hex the boy for daring to tempt him this way. It's a sure sign of decadence, a ploy to compromise him by drawing him deeper into intimacy. Such a thing would undoubtedly weaken him. It would give Severus power over him. Albus knows—and so does Severus—how hunger can cloud the mind.

He stands and looks. He shouldn't, but he can't _not_ look. Severus' body is hypnotically, awfully, the most irresistible thing in the room. Albus stares, mesmerised and appalled, at so much sallow, marked-up skin, thin unloved flesh, delicate feet, hands slim and hinged and corroded by exposure to the grimmest substances, bent oil-black head, slack purse of his woeful, underfed belly. And below it, the core of his sexual being, slung listless in the fork of his thighs.

Fingers twined in his beard, Albus gluts his abstemious soul on the sight until he's absorbed enough to lessen the impact and look away.

He's fairly certain the boy has never been loved. Not, of course, that Severus is a virgin. Or perhaps he is; stranger things have been known to happen. It doesn't stop his awkward, baffled, almost agonised need from sending out waves of inappropriate longing. This emotional rapacity is more repellent than his physical defects. Still, his body's not worthy of memorial masses. It won't inspire symphonies. Severus is no one's muse; he doesn't, like Gellert, arouse wild, sensual dreams of ruling worlds together—although a more personal dominion tugs discreetly at Albus' groin.

Admittedly his dark nipples, peeking out of the sparse black fleece, invite the firm press and stroke of fingers hitting minor keys, the sharps and flats of his dissonant personality held down, teased out, struck to perfect pitch by the performer's mastery—and Albus is a consummate performer, if he does say so himself. The exquisite potential of that limp prick, wistful in its resignation, must remain a torment to him, untouched.

He could play this body for his own ends, just as he's played Severus' mind. Severus probably expects him to. He has no confidence in the 35-year-old gift he lays at Albus' feet; he knows whatever value he possesses lies more in his morbid intelligence and in the greed that repeatedly leads him astray than in the pale corners, protruding angles, veined arms, the shallow indentations along his sinewy thighs, the thick greasy hair that is as unapologetic as his arrogant, visor-like nose.

Albus curls a hand around the forbidden slope of shoulder and says as pityingly as he can, "My dear boy, I'm not Tom Riddle. I don't expect you to offer yourself to me. Everything I need of you I already have."

Severus tilts his head back. Instead of the familiar remorse, exhaustion, bitterness, he looks... speculative.

Eyes on Albus' face, he slowly turns his forearm upward. Putrid and obviously painful, the Mark festers: obscene, alive, polluting his pale skin.

Albus stares down but can't say the words, can't complete the ritual.

In truth Severus _doesn't_ disgust him. His nakedness is more vivid, more compelling, than anything Gellert ever gave him.

This is mortality, here under his hand. This is submission, however grudging. This is the music of the physical body, an operatic re-writing of all the contracts signed between them, duets of treachery and sacrifice and offstage consummation, all of them themes Albus has composed privately and repeatedly throughout his lifetime. Autobiographies of self-denial, of sublimated lust.

In this moment he can _feel_ Severus dying under his hand. He knows, now, why he's kept the boy by his side for so long. Others are willing to die, too, and Albus loves them for it. Their selfless courage. But most of them are gambling on scraping out of this alive. Severus isn't. He knows what he's good for, and he trusts Albus to make his penance count.

"Get dressed," Albus says, wringing the boy's shoulder, thieving one last touch. He removes his hand and glances briefly at his fingertips; there's blood under one nail. "You know what I must ask of you."

Then, having stark proof his Potions master is virtually skin and bones, he orders cream cakes and scalding tea and won't let Severus leave until he's forced down two of them and finished half the pot.

The year ends in disaster, with a sobbing father prostrate across his son's body and Harry's blood running in Tom Riddle's veins.

Reincarnated at last, the Dark Lord summons his flock. Stony-faced, Severus goes, and Albus has no idea if he'll see him alive again. He returns, thank Merlin, unbroken but angrier than before. Colder, more devoted. Entombed for the rest of his life in this terrible masquerade.

Fifth year, Harry matures, calling Severus' erotic instability into question. Beset by urgent developments elsewhere, Albus shuts them in a room together, a risk that pays off even more explosively than he'd hoped. So that's one less thing to worry about. He never expected Harry to succeed in shielding his mind against Voldemort. He did, however, lend Severus his Pensieve and suggest weeding out any memories he didn't wish to share. He's not the least bit ashamed of having sent a student to summon Severus away, for the swelling—and whatever's making Severus behave like a jealous, besotted fifth-year is surely infected—must not be allowed to burst.

Recalling that someday he'll have no choice but to tell Severus of Harry's fate, he closes his eyes and turns quickly to other things.

Sirius falls through the Veil, and Harry goes a bit mad. Albus loves him dearly for the violence of his grief, his furious discovery that no one, not even Albus, can be trusted. Fortunately, Harry's the sort of boy who destroys things instead of people, and whose trust can be won back through carefully allotted confession. A shame—or perhaps blessing—that Severus would rather die than confide his sins.

Sixth year, Albus stops trying to extinguish his Potions master's deformed, indelicate feelings. For one thing, Albus has exposed his own emotional deformity by slipping Gaunt's ring on his finger. Now time is running out, as his hideous, blighted hand is always there to remind him.

It's rather painful watching Severus struggle to come to terms with the end of all things. He picks fights with Albus and runs himself ragged, teaching, spying, committing atrocities in the Dark Lord's name, stalking Draco, searching for potions and counter-curses to prolong Albus' life, stretching his night-dark soul to its limits to protect Harry.

More than ever, Harry's presence is like a lit wand held to parchment, charring a black, smoking hole that spreads and curls the paper. Severus' soul is the parchment. On it are all the crossed-out apologies, self-justifications, agonised confessions he's tried to make over the years to Lily Evans: blotted, illegible, the black ink blurring with maudlin sorrow, the words overwritten with equally useless words, desperate and inadequate, the scornful commentary inscribed by his conscience dripping red in the margins.

As far as Albus can make out, the memory of Lily Evans is a metaphorical Horcrux for his young spy, a broken-off shred of Severus' heart that keeps him alive, keeps his will to live from deteriorating. Otherwise, Albus believes, he'd be dead by now. Harry is the repository of that memory, just as he's more literally the vessel for Tom's Horcrux. It's why Albus has decided not to reveal the entirety of his plans to his Slytherin protégé.

Severus won't flinch from dying for Harry's sake; that's not the issue. But by the time Albus is through with him, he'll be used up. It's been more or less settled since he presided over that awful bout of weeping the day the Potters were killed. Severus signed on for death, and it looks more and more as if the time to call in that outstanding promise approaches.

He trusts that Severus, not having changed in most other respects, will still be up for suicide.

Their ritual is a thing of the past. Neither of them has time, and Severus' irate faithfulness, his careworn, thin-lipped treatment of Albus's curse-wracked body, makes penance irrelevant. Of late, however, Albus finds himself saying the words again, repeating them over and over to himself, mentally disciplining Severus, insisting on his ugliness, his cruelty, even when he's not there.

When the fractious boy suddenly turns on him and threatens to go back on his word—a threat that will kill him should Draco, as he surely will, fail to kill Albus—he understands why.

It's time to talk about Harry, and Albus can't do that without summoning the old storm-beaten shadow of disgust.

Severus' reaction to what he hears is subdued at first, close-furled, his mind slowed by his reluctance to accept the truth. Albus sees him reason back through their years of association, rewriting their shared history in the light of this new knowledge.

Then he rises to his feet as if prepared to kill Albus right now.

"You have used me."

Silly to be so indignant; it's been the basis of their relationship for more than fifteen years.

Albus, being Albus, prevails. Not that he isn't shaken by the evidence of Severus' petrified love, the departing glow of Lily Evans' Patronus. It's more disturbing than he'll admit, having it brought home to him that Severus has long outgrown the moral playpen in which Albus left him to stew, a stunted wreck of a creature.

He's still blinking back tears when Severus, with the blackest look imaginable, approaches and kneels sternly as if before an altar, gazing up.

Oh. Oh yes, he supposes this makes sense.

Before Albus can muster the expected words, Severus presses his beautiful hands to Albus' legs and slides the gaudy robes all the way to his waist. That touch, the slither of fine cloth on his shanks, up his withered thighs, is startling. In that moment Albus is more naked to another person than he's been in—well, longer than he cares to remember.

His shock deepens and a sense of triumphant delight curls in his belly when Severus works his pants down and takes Albus' prick in his mouth. Albus rises to the occasion. More than just the enveloping heat of Severus' mouth, it's the sight of his face bobbing up to and away from Albus' groin, the juxtaposition of his long, greasy, grotesquely sensual hair brushing against Albus' legs, the pleasure of his narrow hands—and dear Merlin, the way he fondles Albus' bollocks as if weighing a bulging purse and estimating the value of its contents by touch alone—it's all this, plus the lurking satisfaction that Severus has finally consented to the sexual fealty implied by years of kneeling—well, in short, with so much to inspire him, Albus comes quickly and copiously. A shower of ignited hunger smoulders and squeezes and suddenly, in a series of flashes and spasms, shoots years of self-denial into the ether.

Fading sparks of bliss cascade into the blackness in which he floats for an instant, eyes shut to savour the extraordinary relief.

He's about to say something grateful or deprecating—he just needs to pull himself together—when Severus, without even doing him the courtesy of pulling up his pants, leans away and lets go his robes so that they drop lopsidedly down his spindly legs.

Albus blinks his eyes open. Without a word being said, he understands what that abrupt discourtesy means. Still kneeling, Severus turns his head and spits out a mouthful of what he sucked from Albus. It hits the floor, so much more damning than a verbal obscenity.

Not bothering with his wand, Albus vanishes it.

At that Severus rises, lurching and somehow askew, as if he's forgotten how all the angles work, the simple geometry of straightening both legs at once.

Still standing very close—uncomfortably so, now that Albus is aware he's using this closeness to punish him—the boy—no, the man, the Slytherin who has as much claim to be a Gryffindor as Albus does—stares at him with murderous, desolate accusation. The cold tunnels of Occlumency deaden his eyes; he's the sort of secretive lad who would have been driven to invent the practise if it hadn't already existed. Albus would lay Galleons to gobstones he even Occludes in his sleep.

He can't help staring at those thin lips, vivid with exertion. Severus wipes his mouth, and his words reach Albus in a low-pitched, deadly voice: "I don't know who you see in me, but I'm not your mirror. Think about that, Dumbledore, the next time you feel compelled to express your disgust."

He steps back then, releasing them both from this agonising intimacy. "I hope you got something out of that, old man, because I will never kneel to you again."

Still overly dramatic, he whirls away—and, dear Merlin, how Albus loves that drama, because deep down he's always been an operatic soul.

He remembers that excruciating pleasure later, on the Astronomy Tower, as he kneels before Severus, saying, "Please."

He has no doubt, staring past the shroud of hair into Severus' strained face, his cornered eyes, that there's no shortage in his protégé of the terrible passion needed to kill him.

The fact that Harry's pinned to the wall, a mute, raging witness, only multiplies the ironies. Because Harry will always hate Severus more than he can possibly hate Albus. Severus is there to provoke and absorb his hatred, so that Harry doesn't notice what Albus is doing. So that he doesn't guess.

And because of this hatred, Severus will never have the chance to love Harry; to love Harry and betray him as he betrayed Lily, as Gellert betrayed Albus, as Albus betrayed Ariana.

His foolish Slytherin never does figure out that Albus appointing him his executioner is more than just a strategy. It's an admission of dependence greater than anything Albus has felt for anyone in decades.

"_Avada Kedavra!_"

Such a rush of shattering emotion crashes over Albus it's hard to say, at the end, which is more annihilating: his pity, his gratitude, or the power of the curse that snuffs out his life like a hot, hungry breath.


	2. Chapter 2

Part Two

Others may treat death as a reward; Albus concentrates on orchestrating the last acts of the tragedy he left behind.

Communicating by portrait is akin to playing puppet charades. At least it gives Severus someone to talk to apart from the vicious, half-witted Carrows and their reptilian master. Best of all, it allows Albus the illusion of being in charge.

This doesn't mean he lacks company. Indeed, the admirers of past generations flock to him. After he's sent them on their way, he allows himself to imagine the most beautiful of the young men kneeling eagerly before him.

His loins remain unlit, his lap a heap of cold ash.

Most distressing. He might as well not have a cock. The only way he can raise a spark, or anything else for that matter, is by fantasising about Severus. Albus comes most intensely to the memory of that green light shooting from Severus's wand, the moment Severus' hatred and loss of all hope, his ultimate subservience, struck him straight on, enveloped him, lifting him from that world into this. Remembering the boy's contorted face, Albus spasms into painful ecstasy.

He understands, too late, that he should have broadened his horizons while he still had the chance. What was uppermost in his mind at the end is all that arouses him now.

The war reaches fever pitch, and a flurry of souls bursts through the ether. They stumble into each other, dazed and all talking at once, half of them trying to find their way back. As a face everyone remembers, Albus is on hand to provide welcome. Knowing he's dead helps orient and reconcile the newcomers, students, Order members, professors. They all mill about. Friends find friends. Families are reunited.

It's so chaotic that when Severus suddenly appears Albus can't in good conscience detach himself, although he notices, out of the corner of one eye, that the boy stands in a circle of emptiness.

By the time he smiles and pats shoulders and works his way through the crowd, Severus has found somewhere else to be.

Albus is in no position to play hide-and-seek. The dead keep coming, and then Harry arrives shortly thereafter. Marvellous, brave, resourceful Harry, the child of Albus' heart. He's overjoyed that all of his schemes have paid off and Harry will live.

No one interrupts them, and Harry, thank Merlin, doesn't question what he's told. Partway through their talk, Albus feels a tingle of suspicion that they're being watched. Once he's sent Harry off to defeat Tom for good—and for Good—he collects himself, smoothes down his beard, and turns around.

Hmm. Apparently he was mistaken.

In the distance, the mournful shriek of a steam whistle heralds the clatter and roar of an approaching train. Within minutes a bright red engine thunders into the station, throwing off heat and excitement, the doors to its empty carriages slamming open. Albus carefully scans those lining up to board this replica of the Hogwarts train; clearly Harry isn't the only one to see King's Cross as the entry to the afterlife.

As the newly dead scramble aboard the cars, a shadow touches the hem of Albus' robe and a voice snaps, "So this is my next great adventure? An eternity spent contemplating the fact that I'm as much a pariah in death as in life? Bugger that. Grant me total oblivion and be done with it."

Albus' heart jumps. "A bit hasty, don't you think?" Biting back a smile, he turns around. "Give yourself time to—"

"Don't preach to me, old man." Merlin, how tedious. Albus hadn't expected Severus would still, in death, be radiating so much despair. He'd glimpsed it through his portrait, of course, but in person its physical intensity is alarming. "Just tell me," Severus says. "For no other reason than to satisfy my intellectual curiosity. Why did you never consider appointing yourself Head of Slytherin? It would have been an opportunity to purify the poisoned well at its source."

Albus peers over his spectacles. "Well, few think of me as Slytherin, dear boy. Even the Sorting Hat kept changing its mind. True, I might have protected a handful of students. But in return I would have lost the trust of all the rest. Not to mention the Board of Governors and the Ministry. Besides, Harry—"

"Ah, yes, Harry," Severus snorts, gazing past him at the rapidly emptying platform. "No need to prattle on about that. The good of the one evidently outweighs the sacrifice of the many." His restless, exhausted eyes flicker up to cross-examine Albus' face. "I just—I always wondered why you never cared for us the way you did for them."

"I had no choice," Albus says quietly, ignoring the background echo: _it's our choices that make us who we are_.

Severus' grim silence calls him a liar. The boy looks desolate, out of place, like a wanderer who's come home after years in exile to find all his belongings sold, his beloved remarried, his existence forgotten by the brave new world.

Albus nods towards the last stragglers boarding the cars. "So, will you join them?"

Severus' lips shrivel with disdain. "Not likely. I've no desire to spend the rest of eternity with arseholes who hate me because _I'm_ an arsehole." His glance ricochets off Albus. "Excuse me, I mean 'murderer.'"

The engine vibrates and huffs, wheels engaging, cross bars thrusting, forcing the train forward. The station fills with noise and steam. Gradually the train pulls out, rumbling with power, slowly gaining speed. One by one the windows wink past. Brow tense, Severus watches them; Albus watches Severus. Reflections dash in small flinches and flushes of colour across the boy's face, ripples of grief and anger that distil into emptiness as the line of cars snakes off, throwing sparks over the tracks.

But for the two of them, King's Cross Station stands empty.

After a short silence, Albus takes Severus' arm, intending to lead him off the platform. "If you like, we could—"

To his astonishment, Severus jerks away so hard he almost stumbles. Head lowered like a mad, winter-starved predator, he swings to look Albus fiercely in the eye, backing away as he does so. "No. _No_. I killed you, damn it." His snarl loops accusingly down the tunnel, a hammer ringing on iron, the railroad ties vibrating in wordless echo. "You think that means nothing? My soul's in shreds and you want—for fuck's sake, you want us to be friends?"

Albus never puts much stock in Severus' tantrums. Even so, he's not quite prepared to hear, "You're dead to me. _Dead_, and it's as much your fault as mine."

His heart wrinkles a little in dismay. "I hadn't realised you hated me so much."

"Don't play the wounded innocent with me," Severus hisses. "If that were all, if I could take refuge in hatred, this would be—oh Merlin, so much _simpler_."

Robes furling upward like parchment scrolls, he spins abruptly and scales the stairs two at a time with a frantic clatter of boot soles.

Troubled, Albus raises one hand. Around him the bricks and beams of King's Cross dissolve. Low in the sky, the orange sun greets him, the elongated shadows of late afternoon patterning the grass. Already far ahead, Severus strides with frenzied determination through countryside that matches the Hogwarts hills, all splendour and wildness, stony vistas, rain-soaked green. His existence is an eternal rebuke, thin, unforgiving, and insanely focussed, bleaker than the shadows and the barren stone.

To Albus it seems that something missing has been restored to the world.

Then he looks beyond, to Severus' destination, and Disapparates.

At the crack of his arrival the boy recoils, breathing hard. This time neither of them sinks to his knees.

A warning wind rises. Nearby, the green stops as sharply as if shorn in two, and just beyond, eerie with sunset, a pale graveyard of sand stretches to the horizon, broken by erosion like castle ruins. The same gusts that stir Albus' beard send herringbone shadows down the windswept dunes.

"Severus, please," he says, unthinking.

The boy rears back, his features hardening in a way familiar to Albus, down to the last disfiguring line. "Fuck you, old man. I won't stay here. I prefer to find my own way."

"But a desert?" Albus says. "Are emptiness and solitude your only choice?"

The sun's dying rays drench one side of Severus' face. Bitter as spilled blood, his glare blackens any hope of reconciliation. "So the landscape of my soul's a wasteland, is it?"

"I'm only telling you what I see," Albus says patiently. "Severus. There's no point to these quarrels."

Here at the grassy verge where all commonality ends, the boy stands divided, squinting at the fiery horizon. "Oh, but there is. There's plenty of point. Only not enough time." Albus has to admire the determination with which he moistens his lips and drags the real issue into the open. "Just tell me, for God's sake. Will Potter live?"

"I have every reason to believe so, yes."

It sounds strangely like an apology. Disquieted, Albus peers into the shimmering landscape, seeing nothing that could possibly call to Severus. To anyone.

"Why," the wind howls through Severus' voice, "didn't you _tell_ me?"

"For his sake and yours, m'boy, I—"

In a billow of black, Severus surges across the line, taking flight and landing a few steps away. Sand hisses as he pivots. Silhouetted against the sunset, he's like one of the stone ruins, the light striking from behind, surrounding him with spears of intense brilliance. His hair flutters sideways, the tattered flag of an obsolete, defeated civilisation. Instead of a line of footprints strewn like crumbs across the glittering sand, his shadow stretches between them, its narrowing stripe their only link.

"Would it have been so fucking terrible?"

"Terrible?"

"For me to live. You said Potter—" Severus' pride wavers. "I thought he'd be here," he bursts out. "You led me to believe he was going to die. If I'd known—"

"Enough!" It's impossible to sound compassionate when one is shouting against the wind. "Please keep in mind that Harry isn't yours."

Severus laughs, a snarling, disgusted sound. "No? So all those times I buggered him across my desk meant nothing?"

This being one of his most shameful fantasies and longest-running doubts, Albus actually believes him for a moment.

A skeletal grin hollows Severus' cheeks. "And here I fancied you shared my sense of humour, old man. Potter mine? You must think me deluded. Who would have me, when even my soul's not my own?"

In life, Albus might have contested that. In death—who indeed? Save for himself, but the memory of how carelessly he valued that soul burns between them.

If he's going to follow Severus into the desert, this would be the moment to do it. The wind shrills, and ghostly clouds of dust blur the air.

"_I regret it_," Severus' cry rings through the silence.

Shocked, for he knows the boy died by those words, Albus swallows his Sonorus of 'disgust.'

"So if you'll excuse me," Severus continues, as the wind drops abruptly to an unearthly hush. "I must attend to my 'solitude' and 'emptiness' while there's still light to see by." Glowering, he turns and strides off across the sand. He doesn't fly or Apparate but walks steadily toward the blazing peaks, shadows scalloping the valleys between. With every step, Albus waits for him to lose his nerve and turn back. Oh, rubbish. Severus isn't that kind of coward. Not a coward at all, in fact. Albus is keenly aware of the distance growing between them and the choice he has, to step forth and follow his heartbroken friend into an inhospitable wilderness.

There's no mistaking him, that far-off smudge of black. The volcanic light flows like lava across the world's surface, deepening to red. Severus walks until he disappears into it, and there's nothing to see but what happens to gold when it's stained with blood. Still Albus stands waiting, wry and self-conscious, watching night fall. It's dim now, veiled, and Severus is out there in the darkness Albus always knew he'd return to someday.

He's acutely aware of the irony: Severus disappeared into a concentration of pure gold, as if burning up in a fire, and the world darkened.

Yes, it's very dark now. He should go back.

Albus turns, bruised and dignified, but not angry, no, merely wondering what he did wrong, how he lost his grip. He had hoped the boy would be different, would have loved him more, but really, he'd always known.

He wonders what would have happened if Gellert and Severus had ever met. Beauty and ugliness, two sides of the same coin. Although Gellert was only beautiful on the outside, while Severus was—

Severus was—

Well. He was what was needed at the time.

He's not surprised to see a man standing behind him, wand alight, the only thing visible in the vast and featureless darkness that stretches in all directions. The Scottish mountains have vanished, and the train station is a distant memory.

Frowning, Albus waits for the man to introduce himself. Short and compact, knife belts and gauntlets encrusting his robes, the stranger bows and says in oddly accented English, "Have I the supreme pleasure of addressing the great Albus Dumbledore?"

Albus refrains from bowing back until he knows what this portends. "May I be of service?"

"To me? Oh no." The man conjures something from the folds of his robes. "I am here at the behest of another. Someone I encountered in the desert."

Albus frowns. "The desert? How very singular. Was it—"

"A lost soul you once knew?" the man mocks him. "Yes."

"Severus? You've met him? How," Albus gropes for the right word, "how miraculous. That you should encounter Severus when he's been gone for less than—I'm quite astounded." The stranger receives this with a sardonic lowering of the eyelids, and Albus wonders if they're related, Severus and his messenger. "You have something for me? Give it here, if you don't mind. I confess, I'm overwhelmed by curiosity."

"A pity, then, that it is not for you." The man smiles rather cruelly. "Our wanderer requested that it be given into your safekeeping, for delivery to a young—I believe the term was _fool_, Harry Potter by name. I understand it will be some time before he arrives."

Carved of sensuous, slippery black wood, a coiled snake slips into Albus' palm. Suspicious, he cradles it, and the hinge on the snake's jaw falls open. It hisses.

The stranger hisses back.

Albus looks up in sudden apprehension. A Parselmouth? Curiouser and curiouser. "Salazar Slytherin, I presume?" The stranger merely smiles and runs a loving finger down the carved figurine. Petulant, Albus presses, "What did it say?"

"Nothing you would be happy to hear. I advised it to have patience."

"It carries a message, then? A message for Harry?"

Slytherin shrugs.

"What is this message?"

"I do not know. It wasn't meant for me. Nor for you, old man."

What can Severus have to say to Harry that he can't share with Albus? As if Albus doesn't already know all of Severus' secrets as they pertain to the Boy Who Lived. In his hand, the scaly-smooth wood seethes with magic.

"I'm sorry," he says, because protecting Harry has always taken precedence over Severus' feelings. "I'm afraid I can't do what he asks. From here on, Harry's life is none of our business." He's not surprised when the snake stirs and twists its sleek wooden head around, weaving back and forth. "Would you have the goodness to return it?" The hollow eyes spark to life, fixed upon him. "Or no, I think not. I suspect it's better for all concerned if I do _this_."

He casts a shattering spell, but the snake strikes faster. Poison explodes through Albus' veins.

The carving cracks against the earth with a shriek of smoke, and darkness rushes over Albus as his knees give way. His body's consumed, though not precisely with pain. It's nothing like the suffering caused by Gaunt's ring or the delirious swallowing-down of the deadly potion in the Horcrux basin. It's an agony of heat and emotion, longing and self-loathing, and for a moment, curled forward, he can barely restrain the impulse to vomit.

The smoke clears, or perhaps his eyes focus again. Albus props himself up, his heart beating too fast, puncture wounds bloodless on one hand. Where the snake landed, splintered by his spell, a body lies sprawled out, pale-limbed and naked.

Slytherin flourishes his wand. "_Rennervate!_"

The body groans and rolls over. Luminous in the darkness, Severus looks cadaverous, ragged and wild, as if he's spent much longer than an hour or a night alone in the desert. Helped to his feet by the Founder of his House, he stands swaying over Albus, obviously dazed. In the sand between them lies his wand, snapped in two.

His smooth black wand, discharged of its magic.

"I believe your choice has been made," Slytherin remarks, clearly continuing a conversation the two of them have conducted elsewhere.

One hand over his face, Severus doesn't answer.

From his knees, Albus demands, "How dare you inflict such torment? Harry doesn't deserve this. What message could possibly justify the use of poison?"

Wearily, Severus raises his head. "No message," he rasps, in the voice of one who has swallowed wind and sand, who's stared into the sun and forgotten how to see. "In its bite I put the only thing I wished to convey."

"This burning?" Albus says, although the sensation scorching through his bloodstream feels oddly familiar. "You'd wish this upon him?"

The hooded eyes measure and reject him. "Yes."

"But I thought—" In life, Albus had kept this secret. But he's too angry, and the war is over, and he feels betrayed. "I thought you loved him."

"You've forgotten," Severus whispers, "what love feels like."

Oh God, dear God. That's why this is familiar. Why it's pain and not pain. Because a hundred years ago, a heartless golden-haired boy had leant down to whisper illicit suggestions in Albus' ear, inflaming his intellectual desires, preying upon his sexual weakness. He'd hoped, at their parting, to crush out that fire. And he had, hadn't he? He'd left Severus untouched.

"What have you done?"

Slytherin says, "Show him." After a reluctant silence Severus lowers his arm, extending it downward for Albus to see. At first Albus doesn't understand, but then, squinting, he makes out a bruise on the narrow white forearm. No, a skull. The snake that once twined through its sockets is gone.

"That doesn't explain—"

"It's time," Slytherin interrupts, stroking Severus' hair with a possessive gesture. Albus' infected blood rises instantly towards boiling. How very peculiar. "If you wish to go, you must go now."

The way he stares downward, Albus wonders if the boy even recognises him. The distance darkening his eyes is intolerable. Any moment now, he'll wake from his trance and pronounce the ritual words he's never said before, words that will scar Albus' heart if he has to endure them.

Urged by the burning in his prick, he gasps, "Severus, tell me—at the moment of death, what did you see? When you died, what was the last thing you saw?"

Severus shifts his hips, bizarrely apathetic, as if his nudity means nothing. "Harry," he murmurs. Bleached and sinewy, his body glows, and Albus has a vision of bones piled in the desert. "It was Harry," Severus repeats, clearer this time, as if suddenly waking up.

"Speaking of whom, you must go. Unless," Slytherin says, "you've changed your mind?"

Severus shakes his head, snakes of hair squirming over his shoulders. "No. This is what I want. Or close enough. I'm in your debt, milord." The whites of his eyes flash as he seeks Albus' reaction, then returns his smouldering look to Slytherin. "Thank you. And—goodbye. To you both." Wheeling, he walks off into the darkness exactly as he'd walked into the desert.

No. Albus can't believe it, can't bear it, not a second time, not with the fire running through him like this. "Severus," he calls, struggling upright to his knees. "Your wand. You've forgotten your wand!"

Severus turns his head aside, and his drawn, fierce face—a face Albus has never kissed—glances out of the shadows. "Keep it," his voice echoes back, indifferent. "In remembrance of me."

No matter how far he walks, the darkness refuses to blot him out. Albus is forced to watch him go forth, unaccompanied, the smooth egg-shapes of his naked buttocks rising and falling, his lean, unloved body escaping out of reach.

As distance shrinks him to the size of a child, Albus recalls a student, eleven years old, small and shabby and poorly groomed, but passionate—no, _greedy_, glowing like a tallow candle with the pure, primitive flame of desperation.

"I'm impressed, serpent-lion." Beside him Salazar Slytherin stands, the ghost-shadow of a great snake hovering around him. "What a remarkably unselfish act, to absorb a man's venom into your own soul. I do believe you've cured him of his death wish."

Albus prays his erection isn't visible. "Venom?" he croaks, adjusting his spectacles. The figure of the Founder melts from lens to lens, snake to man and back again. "You refer, dare I hope, to Nagini?"

"That, too." Slytherin summons and scrutinises the snapped wand, then fixes it with a tap of his finger. "Look at the tremendous favour you've done him. How you've purged him. What you feel now, he once felt for you. It's all yours, that anguish. Do with it what you will. Love yourself as he loved you." Smiling, he holds out the healed wand. "But then, you always did."

Albus accepts both the rebuke and the gift. "Where is he going, do you know?"

"Back."

The thread-fine ambiguity insinuates something besides the desert, yet it still takes Albus a moment to catch on. "To life? But—Merlin help him, he _can't_. His body's beyond saving."

"Forward, then," Salazar agrees, unperturbed. "You scholars, so pedantic in the face of conflicting evidence. But indeed. Forward. Time isn't as linear when you approach it from our side."

_Back_. Albus finds the idea repugnant. "But where—why— "

"Ah, now you are being deliberately thick. Surely the pertinent question is _who_." As Slytherin leans forward, it's as if an enormous snake spreads its hood. "The ones who can't be at peace—_they_ are the most dangerous."

The shadow shrinks back to the lineaments of a man, its flash of sympathy fading. "Never look to see Severus Snape again."

The wand rolls from Albus' hand, and the pain in his chest surprises him. He feels blasted inside, blackened, as he had after he'd so rashly donned that curséd ring. "Was there no other way?"

They both know he hasn't a leg to stand on. His symbolic prostration feels bitter. Bitter, too, the stimulus engorging his prick.

His punisher smirks the way Severus used to when he was about to be an absolute shit to Harry. Albus braces himself for the words, the sneer, the sibilant expression of—

"I have no dragon in this joust," observes Salazar the Serpent. "To be frank, what use has any man for declarations of love that were meant for another?"

Love? But that's not— Surely he's joking.

Still ironic, Slytherin bows and merges seamlessly with the dark. Albus doesn't protest. He remains where he is, on his knees, which he should have remembered isn't always a gesture of submission. On his knees, from whence Severus used to stare up with Occluded eyes, waiting futilely for Albus to reach down a hand to help him up.

He sits and thinks, because that's what he does. Eventually the sun will rise. The sun will turn the world gold again, burning the darkness to a memory. No matter how heavily his disappointment weighs upon him, Albus will rise with it, phoenix-like in his reinvention, because he has lived his entire life there, in the light. Never mind that his loins harden for darkness; or that his heart self-destructs over and over to vanquish the weakness that disgusts him so.

Sliding one hand down, he takes hold through his robes of that part of him already risen and rejuvenated, the rebellious part that lost the game long ago. Severus' curse glows in his blood. He knows it will hurt, but he pushes and pulls to get there, bracing himself, the poison boiling from within, Severus' hate, Severus' love, the orgasm igniting, intoxicating, incinerating his prick. As his head drops forward and his knees grind on sand, the obsessive nature of that passion explodes through him, a chain reaction of insatiable need, and Albus understands: there was only one message all along.

_Harry_.

Oh God.

_Harry_.

He should have known. He should have flung his arms around Severus and refused to let go.

_Harry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, Harry_.


End file.
